Gillian Wearing describes her work as “editing life” (Stonard, 2001). She documents the confessions of people through photography and film. The portraits she creates are very powerful to look at because these are pictures of real people and their own personal thoughts on public display. This photo of the policeman holding the ‘help’ sign really stood out to me because it can be interpreted in different ways. Is he expressing that he is here to help, or needs help? Or could he be asking us to help?

http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/GW_Image-01-e1416570167151-1170×655.jpg

http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/gillian-wearing/

Wearing’s work has inspired us to create something as bold and engaging. By using giant speech bubbles, we are creating visual spectacles that will really capture the public’s eye and draw their attention to us and what we are doing. The work we want to create is meant to be questioned in order to peek the members of the public’s curiosity. We want reactions, whether it is confusion, bewilderment, fascination, and even misunderstanding.

Wearing liberates the people she encounters by allowing them the freedom of speech in a safe, inviting environment. Of course, not everyone is willing to be a part of something like this, but when someone does engage and open themselves up to possibility, they are liberating themselves from the constraints of modern society. What I mean by this, is the fact that people choose to be silent and not express their feelings because it is safer, easier and not always socially accepted. In addition to this, the people who Wearing photographs are courageous enough to openly express their insecurities, anxieties and worries about their lives by letting down their metaphorical guards which have been built up to keep others out.

This example of creativity and bravery has inspired us to create our own work which defies social boundaries and liberates us and the public from social normalities. Our speech bubbles are designed to disrupt the public’s set journeys and to give them the opportunity of distraction by simply looking up. We tend to walk with our heads down in the literal and metaphorical sense and I believe we need to take the time to just ‘look up’.

Stonard, J. (2001) Gillian Wearing OBE. [online] New York: Tate. Available from: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/gillian-wearing-obe-2648 [Accessed 25 February 2015].

In the city “we are surrounded by buildings to which access is restricted or denied to us because of our status, because our actions may be against the common good” (Pearson, 2010, 97). In this sense, we are denied the freedom to go where we please because of our position in society. We are being forced to abide by strict social rules and if we were to stray beyond these social barriers, we would be made to feel as if we didn’t belong.

However, Pearson also states that “in the city we can be anonymous. This perhaps increases our freedom of action” (Pearson, 2010, 97). The City itself is a means of liberation. Everyone and anyone has the right to walk the city streets and pursue whichever path they choose. In the City we have the freedom of movement, but to what extent? It can also be asked that, is being anonymous the only way in which we can feel free in the city? What if we were to stand out? Does this not liberate us from being stuck in the crowd? Our aim is to stand out and be seen when creating performance, not only to liberate ourselves by doing something different and unusual but to liberate people from dominant ideologies of social normalities and regulations.

“In public, we may require a kind of physical restraint, a kind of decorum that allows the mass to function” (Pearson, 2010, 98). In this sense, we take on a kind of persona that allows us to blend in with the crowd in order to get on uninterrupted with our everyday activities. We hardly question the ideologies behind our behaviour in public social spheres which is why we want to create a performance that will stand out and challenge these ideologies.

Pearson, M. (2010) Site Specific Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan

After reading about Michael Pinchbeck’s work “Sit with me for a moment and remember” a number of questions came to me in regards to our chosen site, the public high street. How often do we walk past people with our heads down and our eyes locked to the screen of a phone? How can we share one space with so many strangers and yet pass through it remembering nothing about it or them? When do we ever just “sit for a moment and remember”, taking in all that is around? Our site, a busy public space, includes busy shoppers on a mission to reach their destination, exchange their money for a product and then leave just as quickly as they arrived. This thought inspired me to create a piece that disrupted the flow of the high street, a pause in the audience’s (i.e the public) lives, taking a moment to stop and look around them without removing them physically from the site.

Reflecting Lavery’s “25 instructions for performing in cities” I wanted to create a piece of work much like his seventeenth instruction “build a forest in a city” (Lavery, 2005, 236).
A turfed area with potted trees would disrupt the space and with two deck chairs and soft bird song playing from hidden speakers the audience would be invited to sit with the actor and have a conversation with a stranger. Opening a dialogue in this way between two strangers is particularly special as the high street contains so many people and voices that very rarely cross paths and there is very rarely time allowed for human interaction, or else there is a risk of breaking the rhythm of the busy shopping strip.
The concrete, economic space of the high street is contrasted against the peaceful spectacle of a green forest rejecting the original view of the space and encouraging people to review how they see the space they are in.

This idea of rejecting the current use of the site or creating a piece that contrasts, was inspired by Claire Blundell Jones’ project “Walking, the Western and the tumbleweed” and her desire to “become aware of suburban details and social space….exploring the notions of private and public space [and] create a new playful space between myself and the unsuspecting audience, who can potentially begin to imagine alternatives in their local environment, re-imagining it.” (Jones, 2010, 88)
Although our piece will not involve getting lost, wandering aimlessly, in the city in order to break the flow of the busy street, it would disrupt the high street and it’s visitors. This will ultimately remove them from their isolated pathways through the space, inviting them to take a moment to look up and around and to review how they see the space.

Blundell Jones, C. (2010) Walking, the Western and the tumbleweed. Visual Studies. 25 (1) 87-88
Lavery, C (2005) Teaching Performance Studies: 25 instructions for performance in cities. Studies in Theatre and Performance. 25 (3) 229-236

Reading ‘A Sardine street box of tricks’ was very interesting and could be extremely helpful if what you want to do is make a guided tour of a specific street within your site especially if like ours it is a wide site i.e the high street. The phrase used to describe how to make your own mis-guided tour is “turning these street into their own limitied myths and sharing them around.”(Crabman and Signpost,2011) I found this a great quote as it shows you can use everything about to the street itself to turn it in to a ‘myth’ and take people on this tour to share with them the secrets of the street and how you percieve it.
In our group we have decided to observe the way the high street moves and at what happens at certain times in the day, doing so we are using the idea the situationists called ‘drifts’ or ‘derives’ in which you walk along the street and allow yourself to be drawn by different atmospheres and ambience’s attending to people’s emotional responses to places as they pass through them. By looking at the different emotions in different places and differe occurrances throughout the day in the high street we are also looking at ‘psychogeorgraphy’.
Although, we aren’t creating a ‘mis-guided tour’ of our site we are using some of the ideas we liked from a sardine street box of tricks.

Referenced:
Persighetti, S., Smith, P. (2011) A Sardine Street Box of Tricks. Plymouth: Blurb Inc.